


Switchblade

by wesleyfanfiction_archivist



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-09-03
Updated: 2004-09-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 07:56:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7093324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wesleyfanfiction_archivist/pseuds/wesleyfanfiction_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for Time Bomb. Wes is a mess. Spike calls in help from Faith to get him back in touch with his inner dedicated Go-Getter. Dark. BDSM elements.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Switchblade

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Versaphile, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [WesleyFanfiction.net](http://fanlore.org/wiki/WesleyFanFiction.Net). Deciding that it needed to have a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact the e-mail address on [WesleyFanfiction.net collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wesleyfanfiction/profile).

Wes isn't sure just how much hell he's supposed to pack into the day, but he takes a deep breath, opens his own front door and tries his best facade of functional. "Spike, you called. From my flat might I add, and I think we might need to have words about that. You do, after all have a flat of your own and while I may have -"

"Let me carry your pissed as a fart arse back home more nights recently than you can remember." Spike drops his cigarette ash on the wood floor like he's expecting a servant to pick up after him at any moment.

Wes knows he has saucers, something that could be used for an ashtray. He can concentrate on an ashtray; it won't get up and die on him. An ashtray for a vampire to use, not to put a vampire in it - he'd laugh if he knows it wouldn't start him crying, and watchers don't cry. They certainly don't cry in front of vampires, however souled they might be. "Yes, well, that might be true."

"Bloody well is." Spike's splayed across Wes' sofa like he owns it.

"Quite possibly. Things have been... difficult." Wes knows he's not going to heal - not with Illyria a living nightmare ever haunting his dreams and thoughts, tempting him with what never was with Fred and might never have been had she had all her memories. He knows the truth is in Illyria and he can't give her up for that reason, even if the questions are killing him. 

"Speaking of Miss Difficult Ten Million Years BC -" Spike loses focus at the thought of replacing armour with a fur bikini. 

Wes starts to twitch and his fingers to clench and unclench repeatedly at the thought of Angel's order to find a way to kill the God King. He can't lose her; he can't stand her, and nothing helps square the circle - not the booze, not the friends he hasn't tried to stab and most certainly not Illyria herself. He wants so badly for the merry-go-round to stop, even just for a moment, let him find something, anything, to grasp hold of to stop his slide into the pit of madness with his eyes wide open for the fall. He wants to save himself. He knows he won't. "Lorne's trailing her. We are supposed to be working on finding a solution to her... problem, not taking... unauthorised absence." 

Spike hates seeing the signs of gibbering insanity in Wes; he's been there up close and personal too recently to want to see it again in a friend. "We'll need you at the top of your game for that, mate."

"And how do you propose to accomplish that? I'm aware I'm not -"

Spike yells, "Faith." 

She comes out of the bathroom. "Wes."

Wes tries very hard to find the ice, the professional that lets him deal with the woman who tortured him, but the ice is thin and he knows it's unstable. "This is unexpected." 

Spike knows this is a long shot; that bringing in the one woman that made Wes' life hell and that he hurt in his turn is the kill or cure approach, but he doesn't know any other way that works. "Slayer needs her watcher. Saw what happens when she hasn't got one. Reckon it works the same way in reverse. Not quite ready to talk to Buffy just yet, so Faith here seemed the best choice. I got a message to Andrew -"

"And I came running. I'm the good slayer now, Wes, remember?" Faith's trying so hard to be. She knows she never ever will.

Wes knows he needs to just let it be to stand a chance of healing - a snowball's chance in hell maybe but still a chance. But his memories are a snake pit of horrors and she's the Mamba. "Ah, yes. Remembrance. So many memories and none of them terribly helpful, for all those lies to Illyria." 

"Dangerous habit that, Percy." Spike's loved the dance of death he and Illyria have been having. The training room's made a fine ballroom. But it doesn't mean he wants the same for Wes. 

"Mm... It is, I suppose. I should care really, shouldn't I?" But Wes can't help it. He was trained to think and not to express the cost - and it's killing him. He can feel it in the twitches and he hates it, hates himself.

He's not allowed to collapse on her like this. Faith needs him _him_. Even if she can't be there, here, if they can't be together, as a good watcher-slayer team should be, she needs him to be Wesley so she can be Faith and sleep at night. That he isn't himself freaks the fuck out of her. "Fuck. Spike, you were right! What the hell happened to you, man?"

Wes dissolves into cracked giggles before stopping long enough to say, "That's Gunn's question. I wonder if he knows?"

He's so broken it scares her. It's just so damned wrong. He's not supposed to break. He's supposed to be the rock she can throw herself on, grind her knives on, sharpen what life's left of her into a weapon for the fight, the way he's done so often. "Wes? What the fuck?"

"Oh, where to start. And would it remain the same?" He needs a book. Books have answers. He can cope with a book. They're too needy. He can't cope with them. He doesn't have the answers, can't give them the Wes they need and want. The one he knows he needs himself. He's used up, a car driven to the last drop of petrol.

Spike and Faith look at each other in matching despair and bewilderment.

He uses the last fumes in the tank to try and keep up appearances, keep control. "I thought the two of you didn't part on good terms."

"We're not the sort that bears grudges, are we, pet?"

Spike's cut cheek and Faith's bruised eye bear witness that, "We talked it through." 

"Good, good." Fumes aren't enough. He needs re-fuelling.

There's silence. Faith looks at the floor, and half-surprised asks, "That's my blood?"

"I couldn't get the stain out." Wes doesn't know why she's asking. He's a mass of stains, even if they're not all as obvious as the stubble - his flat's no different.

Spike's quiet, subdued. "Know the feeling. Out damned spot, and all." 

The flat's lost in the silence of three people without a clue what to say to fix the unfixable.

Faith tries. "Wes, I'm sorry. I heard about Fred -"

And it's more effective than the three of the five main torture groups he didn't snap under. He fucking loses it big time. If looks could kill, she'd be pushing up daisies, and the acid in his voice could melt metal. "Don't say her name! You don't sully her name with your lips!"

It shatters Faith; she's so fucking _hurt_. She's trying so hard to do the right thing, the normal thing that everyone else gets without having to think so damn hard what the right words and things to do are. She's been hurt enough, so she falls back on old habits that might not be all she is anymore, but ones she knows work and make the guy hurt, not her. "You want these lips, Wes, I know you do."

"Hardly." There's centuries of practice at contempt for lower beings in Wes' tone. 

And she'll be fucked if she doesn't want to make him hurt for it, make him want to fuck her, make him admit it. "Real hard, huh, Wes?" 

"Why would I want to wallow in filth like you, Faith?" Death in jeans and a leather jacket, putting the bitch that tried to kill him in her place - it's two sides of the only coin Wes has left to throw on the roulette table.

She's trying, she's tried so damned much to be a good person, or if she can't be good to be good enough, but she only got the inferiority complex out of the Slayer deal. She lost any hold on the superiority complex in a blood soaked room where she tried to make her only friend kill her. But it doesn't mean that it's not agony when he pulls away the thin skin she's grown over the fucked-up kid and the guilt and the rejection that the murderer has to learn to live with, and the only way she has to fight back is mouth or fists. She's used her fists on him too much to live with herself, and she knows full well that if she starts making him suffer, she won't stop until he's dead and in pieces at her feet. So she taunts him with what she's no intention of giving him. "You've always wanted me. I could feel it, you know."

Spike stubs out his cigarette on the floor. "This never goes well, you know."

His interruption is the last thing she wants and the absolute thing she needs to pull back before she crashes and burns both herself and Wes. "Shut up, Spike."

But it's too late. She's tipped gas into the tank and Wes has his pedal to the metal. He pushes her head back with just the point of his finger on her chin, and her blood boils at how fucking easily she goes with him. "Still in need of a little _release_ , are we, Faith?"

And Spike's watching like a well-fed cat eyeing a particularly tasty mouse. "Mummy's boy not getting the job done then, love?"

"Lasted three months." She'll always be the bad girl to so many, especially now she's dumped Robin. She's heard the gossip, how stupid Faith turned her back on 'the best thing that ever happened to her'. 

"What happened, love?" Spike's switches between snark and concern - she's never going to understand the guy. But the concern, the caring, directed at her not Robin - that feels damned good.

The other slayers, B's friends - they've never been expected to be their guy's mom, but it doesn't stop them scorning her for saving herself - and how fucking hard was that. She hates how bad she feels, but there's no way in hell she's telling Spike and Wes that or the full story of the disaster. "He stopped surprising me." 

Spike lights up a cigarette and hands it to her. "Should have gone vamp, pet. 'Course I wasn't on the market at the time." 

The smoke feels so warm and she's been feeling cold and alone for months. "You for sale now, blondie? Come to think of it, Robin always said -"

He gives her the head-tilt and can see that she's affected by it. "A pile of self-righteous clap-trap?" 

"Pretty much." She'd thought others had changed while she did, but found too late that you're either a Scooby or not. She'd forgotten her first lesson - that she's not - and Robin could be. Faith knows nothing ever will change and they'll never want her, any of them. She fucking hates it; she'd still do anything to be wanted, part of the group, but she's not sure she can let herself be that vulnerable again. 

"A watcher should never sully himself, betray his calling." It's the exact worse thing he could say to Faith and he knows it. He hates how bloody good the pain in her eyes feels.

She can see him standing straight, and it's so the man that twisted the knife in the junkie that she expects any minute to be called a rabid dog that should have been put down years ago. She certainly feels like one. 

She turns to Spike before she jumps Wes and kills the bastard, or fucks him - the low down tickle wants that. She wishes she could stop thinking with her cunt, but her brain doesn't do much better and at least her cunt wants to fuck Wes not kill him - which she thinks has to be progress of a sort. Spike's simpler. He's pretty, he's B's, and she knows B didn't stop the 'stupid Faith' talk in the Council - too busy playing with her latest demon toy, playing with anyone but Faith when she needs her. She loves B, but fuck if she really doesn't want to hurt her sometimes. "Hey, came to help here. You gonna let him talk to a girl like that, Spike?" 

He gets up from the sofa and runs his finger down her cheek. "Not a girl, pet. You're a slayer, know that well and good. I can feel it, right here." He puts her hand on his head and heart.

And she can _feel_ him, and now she fucking wants him as well as Wes. She's so screwed. "You gotta thing for slayers. I know that, William."

He runs his hand through his hair, breaking order into anarchy. "What is it with you birds and the William bit when you want to play a bloke. Think I'm that easy, huh?" 

She steps closer to him. "From what I hear, well, yeah."

He's close enough to kiss or bite. "Why, you up for it? Want to compare notes, do you?"

Wes takes the step closer to her back to order her to, "Fuck the vampire, Faith."

Spike snaps, "Don't I get a say in this?"

"No!"

"No!"

"Wrong slayer, Wes. Fucking the dead's B's kick." She looks at Spike and grins. "No offence." She damned well wants to inflict it, teach him for making her want him, make herself vulnerable again.

"Not much taken, love." He doesn't close for the kiss or bite. But he doesn't step away either.

"Now, now, Faith. Manners." Wes' dick's rubbed right into her ass and it's rock hard. "Ladies take their coat off when they enter someone's home." 

And the bastard wraps his arms round her and pulls off her denim jacket in one go, scratching her nipples just right as he does it. She melts into Spike, who strokes her hair as he pushes close enough that she can feel his cock against a T-shirt that suddenly feels very thin.

He rumbles into her ear. "Yeah, and what about that promise to ride me 'til my legs buckle and you pop me like warm champagne'. Still waiting on that one, love."

Wes slides down her body, never losing contact, caressing her legs just hard enough until he reaches her feet. "Promises should be kept." And he kneels and unlaces her boots one by one. As he caresses the arches of her feet, kisses her toes, they're not the only thing that's undone.

"Yeah, pet. No one likes a welcher." Spike snatches a kiss and she'd no intention of playing when she started this, but she can't help kissing him back, losing herself in him, in his kiss, in the man at her feet kissing and biting her toes. Spike kisses her mouth, her nose, her forehead, her eyelashes; he's kissing his way down her throat as she feels her foot being put down. 

"You need to take it all the way, Faith." Wes pinches her nipples just _right_. She groans as he pushes Spike away from her neck and pulls her T-shirt over her head.

She can't help asking, before she loses herself to them. "Why?"

"Because a good slayer should always obey her watcher, Faith." Wes unbuckles her belt and wraps it round her neck. "You're hardly a good slayer." He pulls it tight enough for long enough to know he's a batshit crazy motherfucker, but what he's doing, Spike's mouth on her tits through her bra - it's so fucking good that she goes with it. 

Wes releases the belt to unclip her bra and the feel of the vampire on her breasts takes on an intensity that's blinding. She barely notices Wes pull the duster off Spike, and the crack of the belt against her bare back is the only thing that pulls her attention away from the pleasure coursing through her body and back to the sound of her master's voice. "No, not a good slayer at all, but you'll do as you're told, won't you, Faith?"

Speech, she's not good with words, and she doesn't want words, she wants them; their skin on hers and hers on theirs. "Always wanted to be a good slayer, Wes."

He unzips her jeans and quite deliberately misses her clit as he pulls them very slowly down her legs, caressing and scratching her inner thighs as he does. "Well, you never ever will be, but you do have your uses as a whore, Faith."

She tries to pull back, but she's too far into the scene and she's too used to taking it to get it. But she can't help the question, "Why are you doing this, Wes?"

She gets her answer with a crack of the belt to her ass for each one. "Because I can. Because you want it. Because he wants it." Each crack of the leather drives her closer to Spike and scratching and biting at him to pass the pain through herself. There's nothing but Spike's skin and Wes' voice. "Because you'll both take it from anyone who'll show you a scrap of attention." She rips Spike's T-shirt off him to get more skin, more skin to bite, scratch, mark as hers. "Because I need it. You need it. He needs it." Spike rips off her thong, leaving her naked to him and that voice. "And most of all because I want it."

Her clothes have hit his floor before. She's been naked in his home. She's beaten her pain into his walls, etched it into his skin. She never expected this.

He's there, right behind her, talking so calmly into her ears that it scares the shit out her and makes her hotter than she's ever been all at the same time. It's better than slaying. "Now, Faith. Time to fuck the vampire. You know you don't deserve any better. And you know you want to add to your collection of Buffy's cast-offs."

"Hey!"

Wes strikes Spike across the back with Faith's belt. "Shut up, Spike. Sit back on the sofa and do as you're told." 

She didn't think she could get any wetter. She's fucking wrong but she can't help asking, reaching to make contact with him. "Don't you want me, Wes."

Wes unbuckles Spike's belt. "Hardly."

She reaches across and feels Wes' desire for her. "Feels pretty hard to me."

Doesn't mean I'd use it on you. Now, Faith, kneel and take off his boots."

"OK, I could get into this." 

She does as she's told, caresses, strokes, scratches and kisses her way into the command to pull off Spike's jeans, leaving him primed and ready to ride. She's never going to be certain exactly what makes her straddle him and sink down on him, but caught between that impressive cock and the voice that goes right through her, she's doomed. Wes' hands on her breasts toying with her nipples, Spike's talented fingers on her clit, hard cock driving into her cunt - Faith's one happy slayer.

She's approaching release when Wes stills her with his hands on her shoulders. She can feel him fully clothed and hard against her and it feels as good as the smooth skin and powerful body under and inside her. Almost as good and twice as scary is the cool feel of a blade against her neck, touching, just touching the scar where Angelus bit her.

Spike comes out of his own rush to orgasm as she stops. "What the fuck are you playing at, Wes?" 

"No playing." And the voice is serious, beyond serious, it is life and death. The knife's razor sharp and she can feel her skin start to part, the blood start to well, a drop begin to slip down the sweat of her throat before the cold sharpness is taken away leaving nothing but the stinging pain.

And a hungry vampire. 

A vampire on the edge of release, of taking a third slayer into death, a second into ecstasy or himself back into dust. Faith can feel a very sharp, very narrow stake graze against her back. She can see Spike's eyes fix on the droplet of blood running so slowly over her collarbone that it's dissolving into the sweat of her breasts. She can see the hunger for it, for her life and she's tempted so hard to let him. There's part of her that wants it, wants to know death and it's in her, he's in her, and they're one tiny step away from complete destruction, complete freedom.

When Spike pulls away, tries to push her off him, pull out, get out, save her, stop it.

It's Wes, not her that stops him. With the same hands that stilled her, he pushes Spike into the sofa, into stillness, keeps him inside her. "I'm sorry, I had to know."

"I pass did I, Wes? I fucking pass?" She wasn't that frightened when she thought he might bite her, but the anger in that voice is scarily reminiscent of her own.

"Yes, Spike, you did. You both did. I'm sorry." Wes takes his hands off Spike and wipes away her blood with a handkerchief.

"Why did you do that, Wes?" It hurts. It's hot as hell, but it hurts that he did it to her, but she knows she owes him.

He still knows it too; she can see it in his tormented face. "Gunn... surprised me. Spike surprised me by bringing in you, Faith. We can't afford any more surprises. I can't afford any more surprises. Not after... Fred."

"Why the bloody hell right as we're getting there?" Spike's moving enough to keep them still in with a chance of coming in the next month or so.

"I had to know, Spike, if you're on the team if you could stop, stop in the most extreme circumstances. I have to know for Angel's sake. I'm human and we've seen how that works out at Wolfram and Hart. He might need you to stop him when I'm not here, or not able to. I know I've not been myself."

Spike snaps, "Feeling better now, are we?"

"Quite. Thank you. I do rather feel more like a dedicated go-getter now."

Spike grumbles. "Well that's good, I suppose. Happy to help - go team!"

"Oh, it is good. I needed to know if I could trust you. I remember that I could trust Faith, but things have... changed. I had to confirm that was still the case."

"I pass too, Wes?" She's sure she heard it back in the moment, but she needs to be sure; be sure of him. 

"Always, Faith. Well, in recent years anyway." There's warmth in that voice and she can feel it slacken the anger in Spike as well as herself.

"And if we'd failed?" She knows the answer. She knows he'd do it too. It's part of why the fuck she wants the twisted bastard.

"I believe you felt the knife and the stake?"

"Oh yeah. I felt something else too." She knows she should be angry, but they've got her hot and she's not leaving until she's come, not after that shit. "You giving up playing games with us now, Wes, and ready to play? 'Cause I gotta get back home soon, before the Council know I've been a naughty girl and helped you bastards out. And you kinda left us hanging here, Wes."

"Yeah, someone's wearing too many clothes an' needs to finish what he starts, before we have to get back to the grindstone." Spike is; he's building his rhythm nicely for both of them.

The promise of release feels so good. "Yeah, and where's all the Master of Pain shit come from, Wes?"

His voice is far away, but his body's right with her. "It's surprising what you remember sometimes, Faith." 

Wes twists her round, Spike thrusting into her all the time, pulls her forward and thrusts his dick down her throat. "Now suck on that."


End file.
